Content Fields Overview

The content fields are where you will enter your text, links, images and other fun things. This is a brief overview to familiarize you with the fields. There is a much more extensive tutorial on how to build your content.

Walk Through and Jump to Points in Video

They are located in the Content Loading Dock on the right side of your screen after the Metadata fields.

Here you will load content, links, images and text you feel are important to expressing the purpose of your site.

We will start with Primary Content.

As the Content Loading Dock explains at the top of the page, you will need to lock this before you can edit it.

Just click the words Lock and Edit at the top of the page.

A lock will appear in the far left of the Content Tree next to your page's folder once it is been successfully locked. Once it appears, you can click on the Show Editor tab in the upper left corner of this section of the Content Loading Dock.

A new window will pop up.

What you see here is a rich text editor with a big white field of space where you can enter text, images, and/or links.

As you can see, many of these icons look much like what you normally use in Microsoft Word. Bold, italics, etc…

Above these icons is another row of icons that can help you properly load in links, written content, and media.

These are similar in many ways to other content management systems like Drupal, Wordpress, etc.

If you are unfamiliar with how any of these icons work or what their purpose is, there is a more detailed video that will explain all of this later.

Keep in mind, if you don’t already have the experience of building content properly; wait to start loading content until you watch all the videos.

Primary Content

Anything you load into the Primary Contentfield will be at the top of your page.

It’s the head honcho of content. If you don’t put anything in here, Sitecore will move the lower content fields up in the rankings.

This will become clearer as we work our way through the remaining content fields.

Secondary Content

Let’s move on to Secondary Content. Anything entered into the Secondary Content field will appear in a little green box in the upper right hand corner of the live site.

The little green box is great for things that you want to draw attention to, for instance, applications or scholarship information.

You don’t have to put anything in the Secondary Content; you can still build a perfectly respectable page without it.

Shared Content

Time to move on to Shared Content. Shared Content is a very useful tool.

You may have noticed in the content tree that there is a whole section of folders and sub folders under the title Shared Content near the bottom of the Content Tree.

The files loaded here are all content that is repeated multiple times throughout the site.

By using the Shared Content section you can access and share files on multiple pages without having to enter the same info over and over again.

To add Shared Content, click Edit above this field and a pop-up window will show you the Shared Content Tree on one side and a loading window on the other.

Select the content you want and use the blue arrow to move it into your page. Click OK.

The content will show up as icons in your shared content field in your loading dock.

For a further description of how to create shared files and how to use them, see the Shared Content video.

Whatever content you choose to use in this section will appear beneath the Primary Content on the live site.

If you don’t enter any primary content, the Shared Content will move up in ranking on the page and be the primary visible content.

Go back to Content Loading Dock and scroll down the page to show other content fields.

Again, you don’t have to enter anything in Shared Content, but if you do, make sure you use it properly.

Let’s move down to the next and final sub-section of the content section in our content loading dock.

Extra Content

Extra Content isvery helpful when you have used Shared Content.

Anything entered into this section will appear beneath the shared content on the live site.

We generally encourage people to use this section to expand and personalize their shared content.

For instance, if your shared content is a full page of links to kittens… You may want to enter in text that explains why it’s there.

We will walk you through a full page build in a future video but for now we just wanted to give you an idea of what you’re working with.

FAQ

Do I have to put content in every field?

By all means, no. In some cases you may just need Primary Content. In other cases you may just need Shared Content. It is your page, use the content fields to your advantage.

What do you mean my content shifts?

If you do not load content into the Primary Content field, the content fields underneath will take dominance of the page. No Primary Content makes Shared Content the top dog. No Primary or Shared Content makes Extra Content the top dog. Secondary Content will always be in the little green box, however.

How do I enter all my content?

We have some in-depth videos on exactly how to use these content fields. All your questions will be answered!

Best Practices

Use your content fields wisely, make it look clean and user-friendly.

The bulk of your content should be in the Primary Content field.

Too much content in Secondary Content field looks sloppy.

Use Shared Content where you can, it will make your life so much easier.